Haruki Murakami has often been described as a surrealist writer. But his latest novel is less a search for truth in the imaginary than a Kafkaesque implosion of truth.

Kafka on the Shore follows the journeys of two seemingly incongruous characters: Kafka Tamura, a body-building, angst-ridden adolescent who embarks on an Oedipal quest for self-knowledge, and Nakata, a prophetic old man with a damaged brain, who is on an adventure he knows not where.

Murakami's mesmerising narrative is an exploration of loss and recuperation. Yet as the two stories interrupt each other, any progressive coming of truth is disturbed. For Kafka, the fantasy of a middle-aged librarian fills the 'blank within himself' (the mother who abandoned him).

Yet the more he strives to replace his loss, the more he experiences self-punishment through the voice of his superego, Crow, who torments Kafka for failing to achieve his goal.

For the 'halfwit' Nakata, who is not as dim as he seems, talking cats and fish falling from the sky forms a part of everyday life. The world's enigmas are acknowledged and accepted, and so the 'normal' and bizarre sit comfortably side by side.

Kafka, however, is not content to leave the 'void of his life' unexplained. So he constructs meanings and stories, which result in a division between reality and fantasy (he hears voices in his head and is prone to violent outbursts).

Kafka's coming of age is the recognition that the truth of himself, his past, and his love, is not something to be intellectualised, but respected as in part unknown. Laden with philosophical overtones and enchanting wit, Murakami's story is at once childishly magical and astoundingly wise. Just as the reader learns not to force this book into coherent sense, so Kafka gains the self-realisation that sometimes 'having no conclusion is just fine'.